A collection of top water news from around California and the West compiled each weekday. Send any comments or article submissions to Foundation News & Publications Interim Director Doug Beeman.
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The Trump administration has moved to rewrite rules designed to
prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across
the country. The Environmental Protection Agency filed a motion
in federal court on Thursday pulling back the safety
regulations, introduced last year under former president Joe
Biden. The rules, which took effect in May, require sites that
handle hazardous chemicals to adopt new safeguards including
explicit measures to prepare for storms, floods and other
climate-related risks.
… California outlawed microplastic beads in personal care
products and banned single-use plastic grocery bags. Three
years ago, California enacted the most far-reaching legislation
anywhere to cut plastic pollution at the source and hold
producers responsible for the plastic they create. Senate Bill
54 (Allen, 2022) was a monumental bipartisan
accomplishment. … This globally significant step in
the right direction could be reversed if Gov. Newsom and his
administration fail to meet this week’s deadline to adopt the
carefully crafted regulations that will keep the state on track
to meet the law’s ambitious goals….Microplastic particles are
found everywhere on Earth – in our food and drinking
water, on top of the highest mountains and at the
bottom of the deepest ocean trenches…. –Written by Julie Packard, executive director of Monterey
Bay Aquarium, and Wendy Schmidt, president and co-founder of
Schmidt Family Foundation and Schmidt Ocean Institute
Economists in California’s Central Valley are closely
monitoring the effects of drought, tariffs, and immigration
raids on crop output and supermarket prices as spring
approaches. While prices have remained relatively stable across
two presidential administrations, concerns are mounting that
California’s water retention challenges and American trade
policies could drive costs higher. Brad Rubin, sector manager
at Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, said, “Any time you impact
farming conditions that shorten a crop, you are going to expect
prices to drive higher.” He noted that water availability
significantly affects farming conditions in the region.
One of Santa Barbara’s oldest residents is nearly gone.
Southern California steelhead trout, a mysterious fish that
swims in our ocean and local streams and rivers, is at risk of
extinction. The Santa Barbara Flyfishers — who do recreational
catch and release fishing — are trying to save it. On
Sunday, March 9, the group will be holding a town hall meeting
to launch their long-term campaign, “Save Santa Barbara
Steelhead.” … Though they were once abundant in the Santa Ynez
River and local streams, their populations have plummeted from
nearly 30,000 to a “mere handful, under 20 today,” (Dr.
Mark Rockwell, the Flyfishers Conservation Chair) said.
The San Joaquin River, one of California’s most beleaguered
waterways, has endured over a century of exploitation. The
river’s flow reduced by 97%, its salmon runs were erased by
dams, its wetlands stripped by decades of mining, and its
floodplain in the heart of Fresno carved into barren pits. Now,
global mining giant CEMEX wants to blast a massive new crater
along its banks – a hole roughly twice as deep as Millerton
Lake. The project, the international company claims, is
critical to address Fresno’s gravel supply chain. But a
Fresnoland investigation, based on thousands of pages of
technical documents, environmental reports, and state
geological records, reveals the project is a needless assault
on the San Joaquin River to extract materials the region
already has in surplus.
Groundwater regulation and its impacts on farming dominated
panel discussions at Thursday’s Water Association of Kern
County’s annual Water Summit. While the picture of how
SGMA will likely impact agriculture has become more clear, it
hasn’t gotten any prettier over the past 10 years since the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act became law. The
first panel of the day set the tone as farmland appraisers Mike
Ming and Allan Barros flipped through slide after slide showing
how values have dropped, especially in regions where growers
are totally groundwater dependent or even if they have
contracts for state water.
California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW)
announced today its 2025 control efforts for invasive aquatic
plants in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and its southern
tributaries (Delta). Starting March 20, DBW will begin
herbicide treatments on water hyacinth, South American
spongeplant, Uruguay water primrose, alligator weed, Brazilian
waterweed, curlyleaf pondweed, Eurasian watermilfoil, coontail,
fanwort, and ribbon weed in the Delta. The treatment start date
may change depending on weather conditions and plant
growth/movement. … These aquatic invasive plants have no known
natural controls in the Delta, the West Coast’s largest
estuary. They negatively affect the Delta’s ecosystem as they
displace native plants that are essential to the area’s
biodiversity while negatively impacting the economy,
environment and public health.
… While water shortage is certainly a valid concern as
California faces historic droughts, it turns out the most
pressing issues surrounding the Los Angeles water system may
have less to do with lack of water than where it’s ending up,
with residents going without as big agriculture and water
investors extract or privatise what short supply there is.
According to studies by the University of Southern California,
just 10 percent of state water goes to residents, while the
bulk – 80 percent – is used for irrigating crops. This dynamic
is a continuation of a series of events that dates back to the
water system’s creation a century ago, which instigated a
pattern of resource theft, political corruption and ultimately
death due to the collapse of the (St. Francis) dam. The result:
An uncertain future in which vulnerable residents are
increasingly parched by powerful business interests.
Chandler, Arizona, recently completed construction on its $44.6
million Reclaimed Water Interconnect Facility (RWIF). The
facility treats water from the Salt, Verde and Colorado rivers
and utilizes Chandler’s reclaimed water distribution system for
delivery to several aquifer recharge sites owned by the city.
The RWIF project, completed by general contractor McCarthy
Building Companies, is a membrane water treatment facility that
allows the city to increase the volume of water delivered to
recharge the aquifer beneath the city and enhance the
sustainability of the aquifer. Aquifer health is a priority for
the city because groundwater is a reliable back-up supply that
may be needed during times of drought.
Water rates in San Diego are set to rise, and many residents
and business owners are voicing their frustrations. On Tuesday,
the San Diego City Council voted 6-3 to approve a 5.5% water
rate increase, with additional hikes expected in the coming
years. … San Diego Water Authority representatives
told the council that rate increases are necessary due to
higher costs for imported water, wage increases for workers and
infrastructure improvement projects.
Arizona’s rivers are running dry for a combination of reasons.
Now, an innovative new tool is aiming to preserve and protect
the Grand Canyon State’s water resources for years to
come. The Nature
Conservancy and Yavapai-Apache Nation have
partnered on the project. The new modeling tool is being used
to monitor the Verde River, which starts flowing southwest of
Flagstaff. It eventually connects with the Salt River, which
pours into systems across the Phoenix area. The new tool
combines climate, groundwater and surface water systems. It
then simulates outcomes of various hypothetical water stressors
like heat and less rain.
Sarah Woolf, a California Ag and Water icon, joins Darcy and
Darcy and discusses Water Wise – a water management company for
farmers in the central San Joaquin Valley, the Change
Coalition, the San Joaquin Blueprint, the San Joaquin Valley
Water Collaborative Action Program, and family farming – just
to name a few! Sarah shares her perspective on California water
and agriculture, how it has changed, and where it may be going
over the next decade or two. What was clear, was there is
so much more to talk about! Darcy & Darcy can’t wait to
have her back! Sarah is truly a W.O.W. – a Woman of
WATER!
On the first day, Trump took radical executive action to gut
the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), revoking the 1977
Executive Order that gave regulatory authority to the Council
on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Trump’s new Executive Order also
directs CEQ to rescind existing NEPA regulations and issue new
guidance that significantly accelerates permitting timelines.
In summary, the Trump administration has overturned decades of
NEPA regulations and related case law. For everyone who has
spent time learning and applying NEPA, this is very bad news.
It’s going to be a full-time job for our environmental
attorneys to rebuild case law and defend environmental
regulations. –Written by Larry Glass, Northcoast Environmental Center
Board Secretary and Public Lands Director
California is staring down a round of storms that will bring
intermittent rain and snow across the state over the next 10
days, and, with the wet season more than two-thirds over, state
water managers are watching the forecast closely, hoping these
systems will deliver enough precipitation to offset a deficit
in some places that have faced dangerously low levels of
precipitation this winter. … One closely watched metric is
the overall snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, a crucial source of
water for the state, and it could potentially end the season at
normal or above-normal level for the third year in a row if
there is a string of monster storms in March. The last time
that happened was during the winters of 1998 to 2000, and
before that from 1978 to 1980.
… As part of a broader push by the administration to slash the
federal government’s footprint, Trump’s so-called Department of
Government Efficiency team has announced more than 700 lease
terminations for offices across the federal government. …
The list of leases to be terminated, published by Democrats on
the House Natural Resources Committee, includes five
sites now utilized by Reclamation staff: the
Columbia-Pacific Northwest Regional Office in Boise,
Idaho; the Southern California Area Office in
Temecula, California; the Western Colorado
Area Office in Durango, Colorado; Trinity
River Restoration Program Office in Weaverville,
California; and the Bend Field Office in Bend,
Oregon.
Other water and natural resource agency
jobs and funding news:
Despite recent political posturing over water management in
California, the state’s top water official says her agency is
working closely with the federal government to maximize
long-term water resilience for people and farms. Karla Nemeth,
director of the California Department of Water Resources,
asserts officials from the State Water Project and federal
Central Valley Project communicate daily, and sometimes even
hourly, to calibrate water movement through the state’s
elaborate but aging system of canals and reservoirs. She said
improving conveyance and storage with projects such as Sites
Reservoir, the proposed Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
tunnels and groundwater recharge will provide agriculture with
a more reliable water supply. “There’s a lot happening in
water management in California and Washington, D.C.,” Nemeth
said recently at the American Pistachio Growers’ annual
conference in Monterey, Calif. “In a lot of ways we’re aligned,
regardless of what you see in the press.”
For the first time in decades, the White House will no longer
have National Environmental Policy Act rules. But it will take
some time to see changes in how the bedrock environmental law
is applied, legal experts say. Project developers are grappling
with the potential consequences of President Donald Trump
scrapping the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s
NEPA regulations — rules that since 1977 have told federal
agencies how to analyze the effects of building pipelines,
transmission lines, highways and wind farms.
… Legislation introduced in Congress would prohibit the EPA
from using any of IRIS’ hundreds of chemical assessments in
environmental rules, regulations, enforcement actions and
permits that limit the amount of pollution allowed into air and
water. The EPA would also be forbidden from using them to map
the health risks from toxic chemicals. The bills, filed in both
the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives earlier this year,
are championed by companies that make and use chemicals, along
with industry groups that have long opposed environmental
rules. If it becomes law, the “No IRIS Act,” as it’s called,
would essentially bar the agency from carrying out its mission,
experts told ProPublica.
Tea Pot Dome Water District has agreed to pay Friant Water
Authority $1.4 million in exchange for relief from its role in
a contract designed to pay for damage to a 33-mile section of
the Friant-Kern Canal. It also agreed to give Friant
pumping data that’s at the heart of a much larger
dispute. The deal is one small piece of the ongoing
conflict between Friant and several of its own member
contractors over who should pay – and how much – to fix
the Friant-Kern Canal, which has been sinking due to excessive
groundwater pumping.
Ian James is a veteran climate and water reporter at the Los
Angeles Times. His recent stories have exposed misinformation
surrounding California’s water supplies and wildfire
response. … Together, he and Sammy break down the facts
that will shape our climate future, and our ability to survive
it.
